I've just handed in my final dissertation, entitled Timbral classification. I built a system that can recognise
an instrument from a sound recording by quantifying aspects
of timbre, the texture of a sound. You can read it
here.

I want the computer to
become a partner in musical improvisation, rather than just a tool. The first
step in this process is allowing the computer to react to sounds in a
context-aware manner, so if the computer can recognise the currently
playing instrument it can transform its sound in a sensitive way.

Over the summer of 2010, I worked at Google in London as a Software
Engineering Intern. It was fab.

For our second-year group project, my team and I put together a
user-programmable guitar effects processor for
ARM's mBed platform. I was responsible
(with Scott Whittaker) for the whole effects processing pipeline
and electronics. This project was mega, as I'd never done any
serious electronics or embedded programming, and this was my first major
piece of C++ work. Still,
we managed to pull through and crank out some serious digi-tones with the
mBed's 10-bit DAC, giving an
overview presentation
at the lab's project expo.

Over the summer of 2009, I worked on audio networking applications for Android phones, with the goal of representing arbitrary data as sound. Here's a proof-of-concept audio visualisation tool. You can get freaky with Spectral, which explores a mapping between images and sound. I also released a simple WAV file recorder to the marketplace, Hertz, which has had thousands of downloads already. I consolidated my voyages into a Java library for general audio networking.

In what spare time my crusades allow, I write music. I was Entertainment Officer
for Churchill College from 2009-2010, Vice President of the Visual Arts
Society from 2010-2011, and I've also been known to take photographs, make films and write articles.